


Twelfth Year

by litbynosun



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: (I hope), Canon-typical language, Comedy, Gen, Lup (The Adventure Zone) Lives, Mistaken Identity, doppelgangers, post-refuge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-18
Updated: 2019-09-18
Packaged: 2020-10-21 02:29:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20686010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/litbynosun/pseuds/litbynosun
Summary: "I wanna tell you about a time I met my doppelganger, and I almostdied."Lup survives disposing of her relic but doesn't make it back to the Starblaster before all record of her relationships are fed to Fisher. So she and Taako wander, amnesiac and alone, around Faerun, taking odd jobs. Lup ends up in a Neverwinter hotel. Taako ends up in the Bureau of Balance. They meet once, by chance, and both make... certain assumptions. Namely, that they're each other's ghostly spirit double, and the end is near.





	Twelfth Year

**Author's Note:**

> This is short and ridiculous, and I apologize.

The market of Neverwinter was always bustling, but especially on Fridays. Those were the days the vendors brought their freshest vegetables, their most flavorful pastries, their best cuts of meat. Sometimes it seemed like everyone who ever cooked regularly came to the market on Fridays.

Two elves passed each other in the crowd, heading opposite directions. One wore a red dress with a pinafore apron over the top, its pockets and hem embroidered with flames, her hair in twin buns and her feet in sensible boots. The other sported a lucidly colored, somewhat baggy coat with a myriad of pockets; he also wore an unusually tremendous pointed hat.

They had the same face and the same wild blond hair. They were the same height and were equally heavily freckled. Both carried baskets laden with ingredients for the week.

They made eye contact. They made identical, terrified, confused faces. The crowd swept them apart. The one with the hat glanced backward, but he could not see her red dress through the mass of people.

* * *

Taako clattered around the kitchen fretfully, rearranging the refrigerator several times and making five batches of experimental scones, none of which came anywhere close to Paloma's no matter what he did.

Merle watched him pensively with his arms crossed as Magnus munched his way through multiple scones, all of which Taako used the no-sodium salt shaker on as soon as he picked it up.

"Would you like to talk about it?" Merle asked, eventually. "We can have a heart-to-heart."

"Yuck, no," Taako said. "I just saw some elf who looked a lot like me, down there.” He jabbed a thumb towards the carpet covering the window at the bottom of the moon. “s’ not a big deal. It was just fuckin' creepy."

"Huh," said Magnus. "Maybe a cousin or something. Merle has a lot of cousins, maybe you do too."

"Nope," Taako said. "She looked _ just _ like me. It was like a weird clone. Like someone put me in a tank and _ cloned me. _"

"Sounds like you met your doppelganger," Merle said. 

"My doppelganger?" Taako asked.

"Yeah," Merle said. "Your double. If it sees you, it means you'll die soon."

"You think I'm going to _ die?" _ Taako squeaked. "Jesus fantasy Christ, old man, you have _ super _ whack superstitions."

"Ooh, creepy," Magnus said. "Can I have your stuff when you die?"

"No, you'd break all my shit," Taako snapped. "Give it to the kid. And anyway I'm not gonna die. She was a woman, anyway, it's not like we were exactly identical."

He was trying very hard to convince himself. But he felt very strange the entire day, and the day after, and the whole week. Something about her stuck in his brain and didn’t let him go. 

* * *

Lup usually eased the door of the hotel kitchen shut behind her since it was old and slammed if she didn't slow it down. But today she was so preoccupied she passed through without thinking. The loud noise startled her; she jumped and clutched her basket tighter.

"Hey, Lup!" said Theodosia, the maitre d’. "You're looking intense. Did something bad happen?"

"Nothing bad, babe," Lup said, but her mind was spinning. She shut the door to the kitchen behind her with a click of the latch and wandered distractedly over to wash her hands.

"I just… I think I saw my doppelganger."

Theo winked. "I'm shocked there's someone out there anywhere close to as hot as you."

Theo was a flirt, and normally Lup would have teased her back, but that's the thing. Lup _ didn't _ look like anyone else. She didn't look all that much like other elves, even. But the person she saw was _ exactly _ as hot as she was because they _ had her face _.

Kind of, anyway. There was a distinctly masculine sense about them, despite the fact that they looked like they were wearing a circus tent, and it made Lup curious.

If they were her doppelganger, did they not realize that they could just be a girl if they wanted to? What a terrible realization to have failed to have. She pitied them. 

"Lup?" Theo asked.

Lup realized she'd been silent for too long.

"Sorry, Theo," she said. "I'm really not joshing you, though. They looked… it was _ uncanny _. I…"

She paused. "I don't know if seeing your doppelganger really means you'll die, but if I _ do _ beef it, blame _ them." _

She wasn't scared, exactly, but she was deeply shaken by the whole experience. Something told her that her double was important. Something inside her _ recognized _ them. What else could it be but magic?

* * *

Eventually, Taako gave in and called his boyfriend for business rather than pleasure. He’d started writing down all his best recipes along with specific side notes, just in case, and that was a lot of work to do if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.

“I have a question about your job,” he said, very serious. “And I need you to answer it_ in detail. _”

“That’s… one of the most frightening things you’ve ever said to me,” Kravitz said, which was unfair, given that Taako had threatened him repeatedly on the Candlenights that they had met.

“Listen, it’s _ really _important,” Taako said, because he knew that if he got into all that they’d be sidetracked for the next hour, and then he explained the whole situation.

“So, in summary, you saw someone who looked like you and now you’re afraid they’ll come murder you?” Kravitz said when he was done.

“I’m not afraid,” scoffed Taako. “I just coulda gone my whole life without Merle tellin’ me some kinda-- some kinda supernatural creature meant I was gonna die. I wanna prove him wrong. You ever-- have you ever met someone who died because of a doppelganger?”

Taako’s boyfriend made a skeptical noise, which was_ extremely _rude. “Well, if your question is whether or not doppelgangers exist, the answer is that I don’t know. I’ve never seen one, but I see something that surprises me every decade. I will say that there’s a woman who was next to your name in my book of bounties, definitely linked to your group and you, but I’ve never been able to find her.”

“A woman?” Taako asked. He could hear rustling on the other end of the line, and Kravitz’s voice got muffled and further away like he’d put the stone down and was rifling through his book.

“Yeah, her name is--”

The next thing he said was inaudible under a bit of static. Stone service was_ terrible _ on the moon and even worse on the Astral Plane. 

“Piece a’ junk,” Taako grumbled at his stone, but it didn’t really matter much what her name was. What mattered was that this stranger was linked closely enough to him so as to be worth mentioning. “Her name’s in your death crimes burn book?”

“Right next to yours, yes,” Kravitz confirmed. "Closer than Magnus or Merle."

_ “Fuck,” _ said Taako, with feeling. 

She_ was _ his doppelganger. There was no other explanation. He was going to die. He just hoped she made it quick.

* * *

Lup updated her will, just in case. She didn’t have very much money or very many possessions. She’d traveled her whole life, restless, looking for a place she belonged but never finding anywhere that felt right. She’d held a wide variety of odd jobs but none of them, not even this cushy head chef gig at a fancy Neverwinter hotel, made her feel like she found what she’d been missing this whole time.

She still had a bunch of cool stuff though, even if she couldn’t remember where she’d gotten some of it. A really bomber umbrella wand, her favorite red cloak, an obviously handmake necklace with a quartz pendant, her trusty backpack full of pockets and embroidered with something she couldn’t quite read but thought might be a name.

Lup didn’t know many people and she’d been a poor kid. She specified that everything she had would go either to her two sous-chefs, Theo, or charity.

She gave the document to Theo when she was done. It named “Theodosia-from-the-hotel” as Lup’s executor, mostly because Lup didn’t know any actual lawyers and she trusted Theo to not mess it up. It also specified that Lup wanted to be cremated in the coolest way she could, dabbing if that was possible within space constraints or, if that wasn’t an option, using a double “communication finger.” 

Theo read the whole thing and raised an eyebrow. “You’re super freaked out about this, huh?” she said.

“I saw my doppelganger!” Lup exclaimed. “You should be worried about me.” She draped herself dramatically over a table. “Today could be my last day alive… my time is numbered... I have to be prepared.”

“Maybe you should try to see them again,” Theo suggested, folding Lup’s will up and slipping it into her pocket. “Talk to them. Try and figure out if you’re related or something.”

“Hmm,” said Lup. “You’re right. I mean, it’s not like I can die more than once, right?”

She kept an eye out for her double but did not see him again until the day the apocalypse didn't happen.

* * *

Taako moped for the rest of the week. He did all his laundry instead of leaving everything strewn about his room. He labeled all the utensils in the dorm kitchen and left little notes on their use. He didn’t have to do the last bit, technically speaking; Merle and Magnus could always go to the cafeteria like they used to. But Taako had his pride, and the cafeteria food was awful. Once he’d started cooking regularly again Magnus and Merle had quickly gotten used to gourmet dinners, and he wasn’t about to force them back into the mediocre fare churned out by the bureau cooks.

The Director was working them hard, training them up for whatever horrifying task waited for them on their next mission, but Taako couldn’t focus on it at all. 

Not that he _ usually _focused on training. Mostly he focused on trying to find a way to get out of it.

Apparently his distraction was obvious; he surfaced briefly from the to-do list playing in Technicolor in his head to see the Director casting glances at him while talking to Magnus and Merle, and then was abruptly jolted to full awareness when she started walking towards him.

“Taako,” she said. “Magnus says a woman threatened to kill you because you looked like her?"

"Nah, she didn't say anything," Taako said, projecting nonchalance. "She just looked _ exactly _ like me, like _ creepily _ like me, and I think she's my doppelganger. Merle says you die if you see one of those. I dunno if she's gonna kill me or if it'll be a freak accident but… Taako's donezo. I should be excused from exercising. I'm confronting my mortality."

A number of emotions flickered across the Director’s face as he spoke. Surprise, alarm, a deep sadness, and, oddly enough, relief. And then she went all stony again. 

“If you see her again, Taako, you are not to speak with her. We don’t know who she is, or where she comes from, or why she might look like that. She could have something to do with the Red Robes. Do you understand?”

Taako studied her face. She seemed really intense about this, and his natural self-preservation instinct warred with his desire to do the exact opposite of whatever an authority figure said.

But she _ had _been wearing a red dress.

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” he said.

The next time he returned to Neverwinter it was with a vial of ichor in his hand and a name to call.

**Author's Note:**

> This is almost entirely based on Tsukuyo and Tsukasa Amane's personal stories in Magia Record, the Madoka Magica gaiden mobile game. Close enough that it started out as some edited screenshots, which you can find at [ here. ](https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/838574)  
Find _me_ @ coldwind-shiningstars on both Tumblr and Pillowfort.


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